2009 PGA Tour

[BSharma]

The first tournament of the 2009 PGA Tour is the Mercedes-Benz Championship and Daniel Chopra is the defending champion. The field of golfers comprise of the winners on the PGA Tour in the previous year and 33 golfers will tee off this year. Vijay Singh won this tournament in 2007 and had victories at World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, The Barclays, Deutsche Bank Championship and Chevron World Challenge presented by Bank of America in 2008. Interestingly Daniel and Vijay will be in the last pair on the first day of the Mercedes Championship.

Good luck to Daniel and Vijay.

[usaindian]

atwal name is in next week sony open

[ajay]

Arjun is having a decent round inhis first PGA event of this year after missing the regular PGA tour for two years. He is at par after 13 holes and currently T20. After 9 straight pars on the back nine, Arjun bogeyed the 1st hole in front nine. However, a birdie on 3rd hole brought him back to par. Now he is playing 5th hole (his 14th hole). The current leader is at -4 after 13 holes. Daniel Chopra is yet to start.

[suresh]

Arjun completes his first round at -1 and is currently T17. Leaders are at -4. Daniel is at +2 through 7 holes (bogeys on holes 1 and 2 followed by 5 pars).

[ajay]

Daniel birdied the 9th hole and followed rest of the holes at par. So he finished at +1 at T51. Not a bad round. At the end of the day Arjun Atwal was T24. Both of them now need one more good round and make the cut. Go guys!

[ajay]

Dan is struggling to make the cut. With +1 today of 15 holes and +2 for the tournament, he is just 1 stroke outside the projected cut(+1) and needs one birdie of the remaining 3 holes. C'mon Dan! You can do it.

Update: Dan had a 16 ft birdie putt on par 3 16th but he missed it. Now two more holes to go. Par 4 8th and par 5 9th. Dan made a birdie on 9th yesterday and this hole is playing easy. So he'll have a good chance to score another birdie there. Currently he is T79 while the players on the projected cut +1 are T60. It may happen that projected cut may move to Even par as the 2nd round closes. Let's see what happens.

Update: Par on 17th. He absolutely needs to get the birdie on 18th and hope the cut remains on +1.

Update: Dan has about 12 ft to go for an eagle putt! Can he make the eagle? Go Dan!
Dan misses the eagle putt, but taps in for a birdie. With this he finishes 2nd round at par and over all +1 for T56. Seems like he has made the cut as scores are now swelling. Good job Dan!

Oops! Suddenly they show an extra bogey for Dan on hole # 5. That means he has missed the cut. That eagle putt was absolutely necessary and Dan missed it by whiskers. Close but no cigar!

Arjun is yet to start.

[ajay]

Arjun is having very up and down road. He is flirting with the cut , as he is currently just on the cut line at +1. In last 5 holes he had 3 birdies and 2 bogeys. He started badly as by the 6th hole he had 3 bogeys to go down the leaderboard from -1 to +2. Then it looked Arjun is back when he birdied 3 holes in a row from 9th to 11th. However, once again he started making bogeys as bogeyed 12th and 13th to go to +1 and T63. Now he is on 14th where he'll get a par.
Arjun need to be very careful as he need par or better in the remaining 4 holes. Go Arjun!


Update:
Arjun got a birdie chance on par 4 15th when his 2nd stroke landed 12 ft from par the hole. However, his birdie attempt went just past by hole by 2 ft and he safely made the par.

On par 4 16th, Arjun's second shot landed in rough beside a bunker 23 yards from the hole. His 3rd shot landed too short and just made it on the green leaving him a putt of almost 37 ft. A bogey was staring him that would bring him below the cut line. But Arjun a made a big birdie from 37 ft to save a par That was a tremendous shot and he managed to avoid in getting a difficult position. Wow!

On par 3 17th, Arjun landed 17 yds short and missed the green. But a good 2nd shot from the fairway left him a nervous of 6ft 4 in - just little outside the comfort zone. But once again Arjun held his nerve and made the put to remain on +1. But now it looked safe as he was on the last hole, which is a par 5 hole. A par on this would ensure him a place in the weekend field.

The first shot on 18th landed in the bunker. That means the comfort of making easy par evaporated and he would need to play carefully and secure the par. The 2nd shot brought him on the fairway but left him a distance of 112 yds from the hole. So it was no longer an easy 5. Arjun kept on flirting with the cut as he played a 3rd shot that just landed at the left edge of the green. A little more left and he would have been on rough and big trouble. But he escaped as he had just 23 ft to go for the hole and he now needed two more decent putt to secure the cut. In the last two holes he had made two great putts, so Arjun must be confident that he can now pull it off. He must have played the 23 ft birdie shot very confidently and lo, he made the birdie!! So Arjun finished even par for the tournament and T50.

In the end, a good show by Arjun. He is having a decent first tournament. That's a good start for the 2009. Hopefully, in the next two days he will make this tournament count with solid performance. Go Arjun!!!

[usaindian]

atwal didnt have a good day today

[jaydeep]

Yes, he need solid last round to better finish.

At $5.4M Sony Open, Hawaii - After third round

T68 Arjun Atwal 69 71 72 +2

[usaindian]

arjun finished his fourth round and tied for 64th

[ajay]

Arjun missed the field for the 5 day Bob Hope Classic tournament. But Daniel Chopra is playing, although he is going thru a bad patch lately. After two rounds, Dan is -3 i a field of 128 players where only 6 players are over par. 3 under par in two rounds is just not good enough when the current leader is at -20 and top 70 players are at -8. Dan has one more day to turn around his luck that looks extremely difficult but not impossible.

[ajay]

Dan missed the cut by a long way. He must be wondering what he must do to get back into the form to at least start making the cut. Wishing him better luck for next week.

Arjun Atwal will again miss next week tournament as the FBR pen has a smaller field.

[Prem]

Sad to see Arjun not making the field for 2 weeks in a row... and Dan not making his chances count.
Arjun could have tried to play in Qatar or Dubai... just to get his tournament play rythm back.
Arjun will get a chance to play the next 2 events on PGA tour as these have larger playing fields.

[usaindian]

arjun atwal name is in the field for this weeks buick open

[ajay]

Arjun Atwal will play his second tournament of the PGA tour in this season. He must be raring to go after missing some tournaments because of smaller field. He made the cut in his last tournament (Sony Open in Hawaii) but couldn't do much in the weekend and finished way down at T65. Hopefully he'll get a good result in this week's Buick Invitational. Butfirst goal is to first play two good rounds and make the cut. Good luck Arjun!

On the other hand Daniel Chopra will try to shake off his bad form that saw him miss the cut for last THREE weeks. Daniel is finding it tough and waiting to rediscover the touch that saw him win two PGA tournaments at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. He seems to have lost his rhythm and it will be good accomplishment if he is able to play 4 rounds here. Go Dan!